Stardate -309131.9634703195 (or so a random website tells me it is): a videogame is released, on the internet. I think Oor Graham plans to bring you An Opinion on social networking meets Star Trek comedy game Redshirt a little further down the line, but according to the Captain’s Log (my RPS inbox full’o’press releases) The Tiniest Shark-developed, Positech-published sci-fi, turn-based management sim has made itself available for purchase as of this very day. Disaster-strewn social ladder-climbing within the confines of a starship also puts me in mind of Red Dwarf at its most well-grounded, which is a good thing. I do hope there’s a Gazpacho Soup achievement.
One launch trailer for you:

I’ll confess to not entirely digging the character artwork from afar, but I do like the Next Generationesque computers/UI. As mixed bag a thing as Star Trek over the years might have been, that was a splendid bit of design which has resisted the passage of time far more robustly than a lot of other last-century fictional future-computers ever did.

Redshirt can be acquired for 1454543 Betelgeusian Space-Groats, or £15, directly from the dev here, or on Steam here. Let me know what you’re making of it – I have All The Games on my plate at the moment, but I am very tempted by this if I can find the time.

I had a decent play of the first beta and I dug it, but thought that it got oddly repetitive really quickly… then I realised that I’d fallen afoul of an early bug which prevented the main plot arc from triggering (oops!). The social dynamics also seemed a bit thin, with the other people never quite feeling like real people. But the satirical side of things was bang on the money and I really enjoyed my time with it.

Last week I had a quick look at it again to see how far it had moved on, and it had improved a great deal – most noticeably, the people act like people now. I didn’t play long enough to trigger (or not trigger) the main story so I still can’t really comment on the game proper, but I’m looking forward to giving it another go now that it’s finished.

So, err…. my impressions are positive but I’m not really in a position to recommend it to anyone. Sorry, that’s not terribly useful. *shrugs*

FCAR F3-G is the newest version of multi-functional intelligentzed gasoline and diesel heavy duty truck diagnostic scanner/ general automotive fault computer. F3-G adopts the advanced modularized design technology which is capable of diagnosing and learning a variety of domestic, European, United States, Japanese and Korean gasoline, truck power system quickly and easily. Actually F3-G is the only auto diagnostic scanner that can test both gasoline and heavy duty trucks in one machine.it is including F3-W and F3-D all functions. Testing the global mainstream gasoline cars, heavy duty truck, diesel vehicles, reaching to the same effect with the OEM scanners. Built-in high and low speed CAN-BUS,one diagnostic connector can test all the CAN-BUS vehicles. Support almost all OBD-II protocols.http://www.obd2works.com/gasoline-cars-and-heavy-duty-trucks-fcar-f3g-f3w-f3d-p-1494.html

20 bucks? Are you for real? That’s a robbery in broad daylight for a game that is a whole 56 MB! (source: GOG.com) Not to mention it baffles me how this game comes with a recommended system requirement of 4 GB RAM! That’s over 73 times more than the game itself! o.O

The full game, when extracted is over 200MB. It’s a game that is heavily based around interacting with AI characters & managing relationships and/or stats; and that is, of course, all complex code, and not fancy huge art assets etc. Whether or not that is your ‘thing’ is up to you, of course. :)

Wait wait wait, since when were we talking about graphics? You said that a game that takes up less space is worth less money, pure and simple.

Well, I can agree with you that it would’ve been smart to ask $10~$15, not $20. There are indeed too many games that I want just as much as Redshirt, but cost 3/4 ~ 1/2 as much. It’s not because I don’t think the game is worth less though, financial restraints just mean I’ve gotta go with the cheaper ones if I don’t want to run out of things to do.